Virtual Universes (VUs) or Virtual Worlds (VWs) are computer-based simulated environments intended for its users or residents to traverse, inhabit and interact via avatars, which are graphical representations the users select that others may see, often taking the form of cartoon-like humans. These types of virtual universes are now most common in massively multiplayer online games such as Second Life®, which is a trademark of Linden Research Inc. in the United States. Many VUs are represented using 3-D graphics and landscapes, and are populated by many thousands of avatars.
Many regions, which are virtual areas of land within the VU, typically residing on a single server, contain complex environments with a large number of objects. Regions are in turn subdivided into areas such as buildings or rooms. When an avatar enters a virtual world, based on its login environment, specific regions and areas are loaded and displayed by default. Avatars and their login environments, as well as everything else that is visual, consist of UUID (unique identifier standard used in software construction, standardized by the Open Software Foundation) tied to geometric data that is in turn distributed to users as textual coordinates, textures that are distributed to users as graphic files, i.e. JPEG2000 format files, and effects data that is rendered by the user's client according to the user's preferences and user's device capabilities.
After logging in to a virtual world, an avatar is provided with an initial login environment. Additionally, the avatar is placed in a specific location or a region determined by the login environment. For instance, an avatar associated with a new user is often placed in a VU's “learning region”, where such new user can learn the rules and laws of the virtual world and about regions the current VU consists of. On the other hand, more experienced users may either choose an initial login location, or may simply be placed in the last location visited before they logged out of the VU.
As is known in the art, avatars may traverse the environment by simply walking or flying to new regions within the universe. This may be useful for a new user when, for example, traversing a learning center to understand how the VU operates. However, for the ever increasing number of seasoned avatars, this behavior is limiting.
A mature avatar, for instance, may have multiple favorite locations to visit. However, using the existing loading and traversing techniques, the avatar would be required to teleport from place to place repeatedly in order to visit each of the desired locations. This becomes very time and resource consuming and inconvenient.